Political heat between the BJP and the opposition escalates

The BJP's latest face-offs with the Congress and the AAP seem to have only added to the Modi government's problems and succeeded in uniting the opposition parties.

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Jyoti Malhotra

December 16, 2015

ISSUE DATE: December 28, 2015

UPDATED: December 18, 2015 14:42 IST

Arvind Kejriwal, Narendra Modi. Photo: Yasbant Negi

As the winter session of Parliament winds down without passing the much-vaunted GST Bill or any other serious legislation, including the one against corruption, the political heat between the ruling BJP and the opposition has escalated so much that the camaraderie of the early days has been totally forgotten.

In the wake of the fallout over the National Herald case between the BJP and the Congress, in which Congress leaders Rahul and Sonia Gandhi are crying vendetta with reference to the Delhi High Court order demanding that they be present in court on December 19, the BJP and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) have fallen foul of the CBI investigation into Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's close aide and Principal Secretary Rajendra Kumar.

It seems the case against Kumar is so big and so serious that the CBI did not even follow protocol, which is to notify the officer just senior to the person being raided, in this case the chief minister himself. Instead, CBI teams arrived at the Delhi secretariat on December 16 at 9 a.m. and proceeded to seal Kumar's office. The search so far, according to the CBI, has revealed substantial amounts of currency, among others.

According to the CBI, the case against Kumar is watertight and one of corruption. According to a furious Kejriwal, the prime minister is a "coward and a psychopath", and he alleges that the CBI took the orders to raid from Modi. Moreover, he added, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley is guilty of several misdemeanours in the running of the Delhi District Cricket Association where he wields considerable informal power, that files regarding those misdemeanours are missing and about which he was going to order a commission of inquiry. According to some accounts, the Delhi chief minister doesn't have the power to order such an investigation. According to Jaitley, the accusations will be treated with the contempt they deserve, and that the CBI is free and independent to do the job it is supposed to do.

And according to Yogendra Yadav, a former close aide of Kejriwal, "both allegations are correct". "The BJP is guilty of vendetta, the AAP government is guilty of drama. Can they please spare the people and focus on governance?"

Certainly, the gloves are off in this growing fractious political squabbling. In the wake of the Bihar debacle, the prime minister seemed to have been reaching out to the opposition in the early days of the winter session of Parliament, listening quietly as he and his partymen were reprimanded in the debate on intolerance.

Slowly, though, that veneer seemed to wither, especially as the Congress refused to respond to the government's overtures on the GST and, in fact, ramped up its opposition on the National Herald matter. With the CBI now raiding the office of Kejriwal's close aide, the widely held view across the political class is that the BJP has only succeeded in uniting parts of the opposition that may not see eye to eye all the time.

For example West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, whose principal opposition is the BJP in the forthcoming elections in mid-2016, came out in support of Kejriwal's contention that the BJP was behind the raid on Kumar. Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal (United) also supported the view that Kejriwal was the target. The Congress party, arch-enemy of AAP, also criticised the BJP's decision to raid Kumar, especially while the Parliament is in session.

Certainly the timing seems to have been all wrong. And since timing is everything in politics, the question of political vendetta is now raging across Lutyens' Delhi.

It is not as if questions are not being asked about Kumar. It seems that in Kejriwal's 49-day government in early 2013, a newly elected MLA told him in front of several witnesses that his decision to name Kumar as his principal secretary was a terrible mistake. The MLA cited so-called "proof of corruption" during Kumar's stints in the education and IT portfolios. But Kejriwal rubbished the allegations.

An old associate of Kejriwal recalls his penchant for high drama at the cost of governance. This associate believes that Kejriwal doesn't have the discipline or the methodical mind that is needed to govern a large and complex city such as Delhi. That is why when a baby died in the Railways clearance of illegal slums in Delhi, Kejriwal blamed it of disproportionate negligence. Until it came to pass that the baby had died even before the clearance drive had started.

Similarly, in the matter of AAP MLA Jitendra Tomar and his "fake degrees", Kejriwal's fury against any criticism of Tomar knew no bounds, but in the end he had to agree that his former colleague was guilty.

Kejriwal's critics also believe that the Delhi chief minister will keep himself in the limelight until the General Elections are held in 2019, when he wants to position himself as the chief challenger to Modi. These critics say that Kejriwal was not particularly happy that Nitish Kumar unseated him from that position by keeping Bihar.

Kejriwal's supporters insist that the prime minister has not been fond of the Delhi chief minister since the time he came to Ahmedabad in 2014 and laid siege to the road that led to then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi's office and more or less baited him for his uneven record of development in the state. That tension was confirmed during the Varanasi election in May 2014 and followed by the Delhi elections in early 2015 when Modi and Kejriwal were direct antagonists.

This pattern of rivalry between Modi and Kejriwal is finding its latest articulation in the recent CBI raid against Kejriwal's aide, observers say.

As for Modi, whose permission it is widely believed to have been sought-and in politics perception is everything, said AAP leader Ashutosh-before the raid was carried out, the tension between the BJP and the opposition has suddenly become much sharper. Just like the monsoon session of parliament, the winter session will also end with no bills passed. The bitterness will likely be exacerbated during the election campaigns for the states of West Bengal, Assam and Tamil Nadu in 2016 and further in the campaigns for Punjab and Uttar Pradesh in 2017.

Courtesy and polite language has been a casualty for some time already, but the raid on Rajendra Kumar marked a new low. While Kejriwal described the prime minister as a "psychopath", Arun Jaitley insisted he would not stoop to comment on "rubbish", to which Kejriwal said he was "lying". While in Kerala, Modi told a rally that the Congress seemed hell-bent on following a set of D-words-destruct, demolish and destroy, thereby disabling Parliament.

With the polity so bitterly divided, Parliament will likely continue to be a contested battleground. Political observers are wondering if this will force the government to rule by decree and ordinance instead of by explanation, persuasion and consensus. Whatever the fate of Kumar be, the fact is that his case has exposed a deep fracture in the political class's ability to talk to each other.

Follow the writer on Twitter @jomalhotra

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